According to my observation, for the most part your meeting this morning has been like a theatrical performance. There has not been much content in the meeting. I hope that you will repent and be corrected from your heart. Those of you who have had meetings together with me can testify for me that in the past few decades, I have had the release of the spirit, pray-reading, and speaking in the meetings, but not once was there the flavor of a theatrical performance. As long as you have a little fun-making, a little jesting, that is a theatrical performance.
We need to see that regardless of where we are meeting, the basic element of our meeting is the worship of God. In John chapter four it is as if the Lord Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “I can give you living water. As long as you come to Me and drink of the water that I give you, you will never thirst again.” That woman received this word and asked the Lord Jesus to give her the living water. The Lord Jesus said, “Go, call your husband and come here.” What the Lord intended here was to guide her to confess and repent for the sin of adultery she had committed by marrying many husbands. Yet the woman replied, saying, “I don’t have a husband.” The Lord Jesus spoke to her gently, saying, “You have well said, I don’t have a husband; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.” Once this immoral woman heard the Lord mentioning her disgraceful history, she changed the subject and started talking about the matter of worshipping God. She said, “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men must worship.” The Lord Jesus immediately corrected her, saying, “Neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father.” In discussing the matter concerning her husbands, the Lord did not point out the sin of the woman directly; rather, He commended her that she spoke well. But in touching the matter of worshipping God, the Lord pointed out her error. The Lord told her clearly that God is Spirit and that man worships Him neither in this place nor in that place, but in his spirit.
I am speaking about this matter so that you may see that even the matter of drinking the living water is worship. The worship as revealed in the New Testament and what has been passed on to us by Christianity are absolutely different. The worship found in Christianity has its origin in Catholicism, Catholic worship had its origin in the degraded church, and in the matter of worship the degraded church had fallen into pagan worship. But the genuine worship of God as spoken of by the Lord is in the spirit. Apparently, drinking the living water is not worship, but actually this is the genuine worship. There is no one, however, who drinks the living water on the one hand, and performs and makes fun on the other. If you do such a thing, it will definitely be impossible for the home meetings and small group meetings to be built up, and the changing of the system will definitely not be successful. When the people who are proper see you making fun, they will say, “I want Christ; I want the church. Even if I take Christianity, I do not want this.” You need to realize that what subdues people is the spiritual reality. It is true that when we come to the meetings, we do not want any regulations or any of man’s restrictions. We must, however, avoid man’s natural activities. There must not be any intention to make fun. In the meetings, everyone should be joyful, living, not restricted or bound, but not making fun with one another according to the flesh. If you are living, speaking to one another with the spirit, then when anyone, including the Devil, comes into the meeting, he will have to nod his head and say, “This group of people is truly worshipping before God, with no forms or regulations, and they are living to the uttermost, yet with no fun-making.” Such a meeting is full of inspiration to move people and to give them a deep impression.
In these fifty or sixty years, I have had experiences of worshipping God. Once I see your improper behavior, I shake my head. I believe that most of the people cannot nod their heads either. As long as there are people making fun, the situation has to be corrected. Many times in the past, I have stood up in the meeting and corrected the situation, saying, “We cannot do things like this. This is playing, not worship.” This is like what was spoken in Exodus, “The people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play” (32:6). That was idol worship. We should not be making fun, but neither should we be restricted. We do not want restrictions, nor do we want fun-making. We are here in all propriety with our whole being—spirit, soul, and body—worshipping God in spirit. Particularly, we use our spirit through our mouth to release the Lord’s word.